I'm the Run Away
by RjRunaway
Summary: RJ ran away from an abusive home and now writes telling her adventures and how she's surviving so far on her own with a fake I.D. and in trying to get out of America and travel.


p id="docs-internal-guid-5e9d86c8-d48d-49fa-79b4-a760354cbb1a" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"Chapter 1: Here We Go/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt; text-indent: 36pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"The car is silent and I'm finally done crying. The swelling in my check is going down and my nose has stopped bleeding but somehow I did it and that causes my grin. I'm finally free. Free from that hell and that bastard. Yet inside, I don't have much time to notice my extreme anxiety building. The constant questions of 'what if' is starting to take hold but I'm still knocked up on adrenaline to care. I'm free. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt; text-indent: 36pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"So what am I talking about? So let me do the intro to get this rolling. My name is RJ. I'm your not so average girl I guess. I'm now currently a run away. Okay, so why am I a run away? Well, true story starring me, I got stuck in a sucky family. Like God decided to really test to me and personally, I think I failed. So my dad is a short tempered man who always screamed at me and sometimes threw things. Nothing I could report, not even when I attempted my life, they didn't believe me. So I moved in with my mom and surprise surprise, she didn't care about me at all so I went back to my dad. Well he would harass me over the phone while I lived with my mom and threatened to kick my ass so I moved back in. Yeah. Sucks./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt; text-indent: 36pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"So I grew up hating myself because he taught me to do just that and would bad talk my mom and my family and me so naturally I believed him. Cause you know hpw parents are supposed to love you and protect you? Well he did love me, I'd like to believe but I represented his broke dreams, like my mom leaving and I look just like her so when he was drunk, he often called me by her name. But as I got older, I started to realize he's just a jerk and I wasn't that bad and that was only after I was given a second chance at life after an overdose when I was 13. You're probably already hating me now but chill, I realize my mistakes and actually care for my life, that's why I'm running away. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt; text-indent: 36pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"Oh yeah, so on to that. So far, you can imagine how hard it could be when you were in an abusive home and couldn't get out. I've run away before, like to up the street and then be caught by cops and having my dad lie and said I ran off to do drugs. Well, there were many nights I cried myself asleep. So I guess i couldn't take the pressure anymore. I always had a bag ready for when it was my time to spread my wings and fly but flying was scary. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt; text-indent: 36pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"My dad was angry again, I knew it from how he slammed the door and screamed my full name. I came running from my room, bracing myself. I don't know what had caused him to freak out, I never found out either. He started the usual screaming, calling me names, pointing out my flaws, taking a jab at me. I held my breath and blocked out his words. But it wasn't going so well. He just got louder and I started to shake. You see, I have a mental disorder of anxiety as you can imagine from my upbringing. So I was starting to panic but I had to keep it together because it only makes him more angry, same with if I start to cry. He'll scream for me to stop but that never seemed to work, only make me cry harder. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt; text-indent: 36pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"He had me trapped between the kitchen cabinets and him. His verbal assault getting louder. When he grabbed me, I struggled and shoved him back. He isn't used to me acting out. Well, I've blocked his hits before and that only made it worse. But I fought back for once. I had unleashed the beast. He threw me down and my head hit the siding, I saw stars and started to curl up, he kicked me and I bit his ankle. I broke through his legs and took off but he had a hand on my shirt and pulled me back, choking me in the process. He then finished it by slapping me across the face. I laid still on the floor. No one moved towards me and they went out to dinner. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt; text-indent: 36pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"I think after the sun had set I had crawled back downstairs. My step family didn't know they just thought I was being antisocial and left me be, but to me, I wouldn't survive another day like this. I waited till they all went to bed, I grabbed the paperwork I had hidden and threw together a duffle bag of clothes, a blanket and pillow. I was finally making the great escape I had been dreaming of for years. While they slept, I stole all the physical cash in their wallets and my own money and left. /span/p  
div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;" /div  
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p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"Chapter 2: Surviving/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;" /spanspan style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"After I left my place, I ran, crying the whole time. I took my phone but already planned to throw it in a river or something and buy a flip phone. But I needed to call my friends from the next city over. She promised she'd always come get me if I finally ran away. She knew about my abuse and offered to take me in several times but that would get her in trouble if she was caught to I always declined and told her I'd make it to when I turned 18 and could legally do it. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;" /spanspan style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"Well, I'm 16. So close enough. I already started texting her telling her not to ask questions but that I finally ran and needed her to get my far away from where I was. I had to break day break and they realized I didn't go to class 'cause my school will be calling them by 8:00 am to ask if I'm sick. It's 2:23 am. Yet somehow, she's awake and spamming my phone with countless text if I'm okay. Of course I'm not okay, that's why I've ran away from home and need to get far away. But she was getting ready and getting in her car when she called me for a more detailed explanation but I forced her to settle for a conversation in the car not now. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;" /spanspan style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"So I ran, ran hard and long towards the next local district to mine, just trying to put distance away from my house and I. It was cold out cause I live in Minnesota and it's close to winter time. So long story short, my friend found me. I got in her car and I remember how silent it was when she got to see my face and how broken I looked. But I still grinned. I was free. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;" /spanspan style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"So time skip to about the morning after. She got me cleaned up, helped me sort my things out and we talked long and hard. She may have been 2 years older than me, but she still lived with her parents. We had to tell them that by law I was technically kidnapped and they were hiding me. But somehow they agreed and I cried hard that day. These people were going to protect me and not turn me into the police, even if it got them in trouble. Her mom fixed up my face and for the next three days I slept. I just slept, I don't remember waking up much because the internal struggle was at its prime. I finally had to realize what I had just done. On day four, there were a couple reports on me being missing but it was only a couple days and I was being depicted as a druggy. So they expected me to return soon. Ha. Not happening. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;" /spanspan style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"So I ended up dying my hair from blond to brown, it looked pretty cool and I cut it during a panic attack so now it's short and to my ears. The search went on and on and after a month passed, I was the main story on channel 5 news. People from my school begging me to come home and how they missed me. I got rid of my phone and laid low. But I needed to start over. Restart my whole life and make it better. So this is where my paperwork that I stole from my family comes in. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;" /spanspan style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"I spent months trying to fake a new I.D. I started by making a fake copy of a birth record of the new name I picked and then I went to a DMV and got my license all over again. The fake birth record got me back into a high school where I decided to be on the safe side to dress more like a guy and avoid attention. It worked. Most people didn't realize I was a girl for most of the time. I had no real friends and got decent grades. Just average. I was following a lot of movie logic on how to interact while being under like witness protection or something. Which is where I got a lot of my ideas from. And some of that movie logic really worked. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;" /spanspan style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"There was a local mom and pop kind of store and they didn't require much for me to start working the counter and restocking. They never really suspect anything out of me. The hard part was remembering to keep my lie going on who I was. This is just how I survived. I worked every single day, refused days off and worked as hard as i could. I had bigger plans and needed the money. I needed to be able to support myself. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;" /spanspan style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"My best friend who was now my 'cousin' always worried over me. Said I worked far too much and that I didn't need to work this hard. I had some sort of PTSD so I'd forget where I was and start to panic. I also had nightmares and scream during the nights. We had to turn off the tv if my missing ad showed up or else I'd started freaking out and lose control over myself again. And after my coma like sleep for 3 days, I stopped eating food and wouldn't speak. I went into a terrible depression that I didn't come out of for at least 2 months. Yeah, I'm a great roommate. But they still put up with me for everything I did. And still seemed to care for me. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;" /spanspan style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"You know, most people would consider the family that saved my life as my new family. I couldn't do that. I just couldn't. Family was a forbidden thing to me and scared me like nothing else. While my dad is the devil to me, family was something I couldn't accept yet. I loved them so dearly but I just wasn't ready to call them family. I think I hurt their feelings at times with how I'd shut off if they tried to hint at it, but they really understood what a tainted word that became to me. I was forever grateful for this. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;"span style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;" /spanspan style="font-size: 59.4279px; font-family: Verdana; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"Okay, okay, so you've got the whole idea of my past. What made me run away, how I got away, where I went afterwards, how stealing my birth records did anything for me and all that crap. You all understand how I've managed to survive and how I now have a 50 sum year old boss named Hazel and how at school no one thinks I'm a girl and how I'm living under a false identity. These was only half the first half of my settling. Of course, there many times where I had to hide because cops were around, constantly had to redye my hair, dyed it all sorts of weird colors and for some reason I always kept my hair short. I think I looked too much like my old self to grow it out. I even started working out and dropped a whole bunch of weight to help slim down my face to make it hard to tell me from the old me. Now let's get you caught up to more present me. I'll tell it kinda memoir style my dears. /span/p  
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